New report explores whether the UK should create a new Infrastructure Development Agency

Concerns have been increasing around the UK’s ability to deliver the necessary infrastructure needed to support economic growth and the sustainability transition. According to a newly released policy report, authored by Professor Graham Winch and published by Association for Project Management (APM), these challenges stem less from technical shortcomings and more from the lack of a strong “project owner” function inside government.

The report, entitled Infrastructure Development Agencies: European lessons and a proposal for a UK centre of excellence, looks at how other countries around Europe use highly trained teams inside Government to shape project delivery and suggests the UK would benefit from a similar approach, through the creation of a UK Infrastructure Development Agency (UKIDA).

A proposal: the UKIDA

Prof Winch suggests establishing the UKIDA could systematically address the current weaknesses in UK infrastructure projects. This would be complementary to the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), not a replacement. NISTA would continue to support the main strategic case, while UKIDA would become responsible for developing the other four business cases to shape the infrastructure project: economic, financial, commercial and management.

Key features of the proposal include:

• Semi‑independence from government to avoid conflicts with NISTA’s governance role.
• The ability to recruit at market rates potentially through a public‑private partnership model, enabling movement between public and private sectors.
• A clear scope focused on major projects that fall outside regulated five‑year investment cycles.

How UKIDA could help

The report outlines that the UKIDA, at portfolio level, could make a difference in several ways to infrastructure development that would add significant value. This includes:

• Support sponsoring departments in early-phase shaping of major projects to ensure that project delivery considerations are taken into account from the very start.

• Support the mayoralties in the development of their own economic infrastructure development strategies.

• Support the start-up of stand-alone arms-lengths project owner bodies such as HS2 Ltd to enable more rapid mobilisation and maturation of owner project capabilities.

• Provide a consistent, experienced commercial counterpart for delivery partners.

• Carry out the Project Representative (P-Rep) role on behalf of sponsoring departments, which is presently outsourced.

• Act as a ‘knowledge base’ of best and advanced practice for the required technical, project and commercial capabilities for major projects, ensuring knowledge is not lost either over time, or between projects.

• Promote standardisation within and between infrastructure sectors.

• Collect, hold and analyse project outturn data to ensure early-phase estimations for major projects are based on rigorous benchmarking and are therefore more accurate.

• Hold a centralised database on supplier delivery performance, rewarding high performers.

• Capture the learning from productivity improvement demonstrators for diffusion rapidly through the individual sector, and across different infrastructure sectors as appropriate.

Establishing UKIDA would require ambitious institutional reform that will take time to mature, but Prof Winch argues that there is overwhelming evidence that major project delivery is more effective when the project owner is strong and capable.

APM has published this work to encourage informed discussion across the profession. Read the full policy report here and comment below. Do you think the UK Infrastructure Development Agency the right next step?